Highly Overrated But Still Good

Boring, long, and too preachy.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Drops the ball in several areas. The first was the obviously "canned music". Some of the cast came off no better than that of a high school play. Well choreographed and cinematography, it moved along nicely in spite of what must have been a small budget. That, I believe was the downfall. I'll take a science fiction "B" movie over a romantic comedy any day.The best I can say is that in spite of shortcomings, I watched it to the end. Given more time, better casting, and an original sound track and it would have had my vote of 8.5 rather than 6. This movie had to have been well written as a short novel. As a film, it's subject the those shortcomings mentioned. Worth watching? Yes, in a pinch.

While I can not agree that this should be in the theater, it was fine for a B wanna-be action thriller. While the writers show a profound disconnect between current political realities, it has been amusing. If you need a good background move or just need something mind numbing this is good.What really nauseated me was the religious connections made about the main characters, it seems obvious that parts were intentionally cut not to irritate the current religious right. Sadly this is a rather ignorant way of writing, that being said, conservative extremists survivalist types find this movie great.Acting started good, 30 minutes in it got way worse. I think what bugs me the most is that no one seems to know how actual military personnel act. There were soooo many technical holes, writing holes, direction holes, I could not list them all here, artistic direction was very low par too. I strongly suspect that this movie had many parts cut in script revisions and the editing room floor.Generally the cliché laden dialog, technical writing problems, and absurdest understanding of world politics, killed this movie. The cg effects were OK, foley and muzzle flash syncing was bad, just bad, as one other reviewer put it "1980's quality"

Remember 90s movie or television show where the characters would swing guns while poor flash effect painted over the scene? Rz-9 takes it to another level with characters shooting an entire clip while running like a headless chicken, missing the target then resorting to headbutt. It's a series of choppy production value, so utterly horrible that it gradually becomes more unintentionally funny as it goes. It tries to convince audience with serious theme, but the clunky visual and rigid acting are only good for accidental parody of sci-fi.A government agent turns into a whistleblower as he finds the cruel method to be intolerable. The titular Rz-9 is a part of the group that is sent to capture this traitor. To its credit, the movie attempt to use terrorism and religious premise, but those delicate matters deserve much more than its underwhelming acting and illogical plot. Acting is superbly monotonous, characters would come across as one-dimensional or even downright annoying. They utter bland script with the passion of bored customer service.The scenes are ridiculous, there's no choreography or any decent logic at all. People would engage in fire fight without cover, flailing their guns erratically and even slapping each other like kindergarten kids. They would get shot in the back, act like their arm is hurt but bleed in the stomach. At one scene their teammate is snatched mere feet away, but these people unrealistically look the other way as though they have the intelligent of stupid video game AI.Barely anything makes sense here, the best thing it has on the production is probably the costume alone. Effects like the explosion are nothing but blurry green screen gimmick and when it tries to bring drones or any sci-fi antics they seem like images copied and pasted over. There's just no coherency on the plot, acting and visual.The clumsy graphic and acting makes for a brief entertainment as inadvertent parody, but for a sci-fi flick, old Power Rangers show has more appeal that Rz-9.

8.1 of 10. The film's summary doesn't really do it justice or capture the film adequately. Part of the reason is that it's clearly lacking the big production and marketing money. That's noticed in the video FX to some extent, but not the cheap stuff you get off a TV quickie. It still very much deserves to be in theaters.In addition to focusing more on the combat and people doing the combat more than the technology versus District 9 (2009), it's also a modern-day, this-could-be-happening-now war film. There's virtually nothing in this that doesn't already exist and the world is essentially as-is except for being at war. The similarities are sometimes scary in the closeness and the deliberate, unambiguous way they are pointed out in the film.What's missing is, as mentioned, some more realistic video FX and also some of the subtlety and plot setup done in films with more writers and development time. There are also a few unnecessary clichés, like ridiculous gun fights involving soldiers with automatic, armor piercing weapons and normal people where no one is getting hit and bullets are all but infinite. Despite the budget, the cast is well selected and comes through with solid acting.